Blender

No, it is not that thing you use to stir up food in your kitchen—it is a hot new state-of-the-art 3-D modeler.

Basic Usage

If you haven't used 3-D software before, the GUI may look
complex and difficult at first, but you'll get used to it. When you
first start up Blender, you'll see a large grid in the center of
the screen—that's the 3-D window. Down on the bottom is the
buttons area. Finally, at the top is the options area, where you
choose which scene to edit, font paths, etc. If you are running on
a small display (800x600 or less), you may not be able to see most
of the top window. In this case, click on the edge of the top
window and drag it down until you can see it. For now, you need
only be concerned with the 3-D window and the buttons
window.

All of the Blender widgets and menus are rendered through
Mesa; this means you can zoom in and pan around almost anything.
For example, in the buttons window (down at the bottom), you can
hold Ctrl-MiddleMouseButton and drag around to
zoom in or out. Notice that when you zoom, the buttons, including
the fonts, are scaled. To pan, use the middle mouse button and drag
around. This works everywhere—even in the button bars on each
window.

The black cross with a red and white striped circle around
the center is called the 3-D cursor. Whenever you add an object, it
will be placed at the location of the 3-D cursor. To move the 3-D
cursor, just left-click on the spot where you want it.

The black triangle with the little yellow ball (a few units
down from the center) is the camera. Right-click on it to select,
then press g to move it around. When you decide
on a location for the camera, click the left mouse button.

The Blender windowing system is somewhat similar to HTML
frames. Each window can be infinitely split (though a practical
limit does exist—if you can't see the windows any more, you've
gone too far) by moving the mouse into the window to be split, then
clicking with the middle mouse button on the window pane
perpendicular to the direction of split. If you want to split a
window horizontally, click on either the left or right vertical
pane. Then when “Split?” comes up, click on it. To join two split
windows, right-click on the pane you want to remove, then click on
“Join?” when it comes up.

Two main editing modes are included: normal and edit. You can
toggle between the two using the tab key. When
you add an object, Blender automatically switches to edit mode (for
most objects, anyway). For example, let's say we add a Mesh cube.
When the cube appears on the screen, it is in edit mode. If you
right-click on one of its vertices (the purple dot means it is not
selected, the yellow dot means it is), you can then press
g to move the vertex around. If you press
b, which stands for “Border Select”, you can
draw a rectangle over the selected vertices.

The Toolbox is brought up using the space bar and enables you
to add objects. Note that you can also use the Add
primitive function (shift-A), which
brings up the Toolbox and the Add submenu. Most of the hot keys are
placed here. If you need to get out of the Toolbox window, either
press esc (the standard for Blender windows) or
move the mouse away from the window.

Figure 2. Building a Blender Scene

Your First Scene

To build your first scene, follow these steps:

Switch over to top view, if you aren't already
there (number pad 7).

Move the 3-D cursor to the center of the
grid.

Bring up the Toolbox (space bar).

Left-click on Add, then on Mesh, and finally on
Cube. Another way of saying that is
Add->Mesh->Cube.

Press tab to leave edit
mode.

Click on the red sphere in the button area
(Materials).

On the right side of the screen, click on the icon
with a white horizontal bar.

In the left side of the buttons area are some
sliders labeled R, G and B (Red, Green and Blue). Slide the Blue
all the way to the right, and slide Red and Green all the way to
the left. The “material preview” rectangle should turn
blue.

Move your mouse cursor back into the 3-D
window.

Change to side view (number pad 3). Move the 3-D
cursor to somewhere above the cube, though it should be somewhat
close (no further than 20 units away).

Click on Add then
Light.

Press f12 and watch the scene
render.

Press f11 to get rid of the
render window.

Press f2 to save the created
scene. Once the file window comes up, click in the second input box
from the top (under the directory name) and enter a name for your
scene. Then press enter twice to save the
file.

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